Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, there have been a number of successful cases. In 2004 ICSTIS issued two fines of £100,000 against companies which were found to be in breach of its code of practice concerning recorded competition phone lines. So there is a record of implementing the code. With the increased powers that should occur even more in the future.

Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, the noble Lord told me that this question was coming. I understand that the answer will, coincidentally, be given this afternoon by my noble friend Lady Ashton of Upholland. I am told that I am not allowed to give my noble friend a sneak preview as that would go against the protocol of the House. I am afraid that he will have to wait a few more minutes for an enormously interesting answer.

Lord Boston of Faversham: My Lords, although it is possible successfully to stop the calls coming in if they are made in this country, can the Minister offer any help so far as calls made from overseas are concerned? It seems that it is not possible to block those calls at the moment.

Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, the question turns on whether the people are offering services in this country, in which case, they come under the jurisdiction of this country.

Lord Alton of Liverpool: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	What is their response to the admission by the government of North Korea that they possess nuclear weapons and to that Government's failure to re-engage in the six-nations talks.

Lord Alton of Liverpool: My Lords, does the Minister share the view expressed by Condoleezza Rice this weekend in Beijing that China will be pivotal in persuading Kim Jong-il's regime to return to the six-nation talks? Does she agree also that the threat posed to North Korea's neighbours is probably equal only to the threat posed to the rest of the world when North Korea acts as quartermaster? North Korea sold uranium hexafluoride to Pakistan that, in turn, was sold on to Libya, and, by such deeds, it endangers the security of the rest of the world by sourcing material to failed states and to terrorist organisations. Does the Minister agree that it is crucial that North Korea make the strategic choice that Condoleezza Rice called for this weekend to abandon its nuclear ambitions and return to the six-nation talks, if it is to be spared remaining as a beleaguered, dangerous and isolated pariah state?

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: Yes, my Lords. Of course, that is exactly one of the issues that could be discussed were North Korea to return to the six-nation talks. Those talks were meant to cover not just the concerns of the rest of the world about North Korea's nuclear capability but the security concerns that North Korea has expressed.
	It is worrying that when the North Korean Government withdrew from the six-party talks they said that they were doing so for "an indefinite period" and that they were taking measures,
	"to bolster . . . nuclear weapons arsenal"
	and,
	"to manufacture nukes for self-defence"
	against the US's "hostile policy". So, it is a very difficult question. We need to re-engage with North Korea precisely to address those points.

Lord Dykes: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	Whether they will hold discussions with the government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia about the introduction of democratic procedures.

Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, while I agree with the Minister about the pace of reform, does she accept that although the House of Ibn Saud has tried to make reforms it is up against the Wahabist religious establishment, which is extremely hard-line and has resisted every move, particularly on the question of a better and more proper role for women? Does she agree that the principle we should abide by in trying to assist the development of democracy in Saudi Arabia is that of festina lente?

Lord Ahmed: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that 1,400 years ago the Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon Him, worked for Khadijah, a woman entrepreneur whom he then married? Is she also aware that His daughter and other women members of His family participated fully in the life of that time? Given that democracy was established 1,400 years ago in the city of Medina, the current situation in the Middle East may have something to do with our colonial past. Is my noble friend also aware that Islam does not allow sheikhdoms and kingdoms and that any change introduced in the middle eastern Muslim world has to be slow and must fit in with the customs of the region?

Lord Clark of Windermere: My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister accept that many of us are very heartened by her robust defence of NATO? Does she appreciate that whenever there is trouble in the world—and she listed several countries in that regard—the first cry is, "Send in NATO"? While it is important that we have the military hardware to resist any offensive action, it is equally important that we spread a climate of understanding and good will. That is precisely what NATO is doing in its partnership with more than 20 countries.

Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
	:TITLE3:COMMONS NON-INSISTENCE AND AMENDMENTS IN LIEU OF CERTAIN COMMONS AMENDMENTS DISAGREED TO, AND COMMONS CONSEQUENTIAL AMENDMENTS TO THE BILL
	[The page and line references are to Bill 18 as first printed for the Commons.]
	The Commons do not insist on their Amendments Nos. 1, 2, 264, 265 and 593 but propose Amendments Nos. 1B and 1C in lieu of Commons Amendments Nos. 1 and 2 and Amendments Nos. 1D to 1F as consequential amendments to the Bill—
	1B Leave out Clause 2 and insert the following new Clause—

"Lord Chancellor to be qualified by experience

(1) A person may not be recommended for appointment as Lord Chancellor unless he appears to the Prime Minister to be qualified by experience.
	(2) The Prime Minister may take into account any of these—
	(a) experience as a Minister of the Crown;
	(b) experience as a member of either House of Parliament;
	(c) experience as a qualifying practitioner;
	(d) experience as a teacher of law in a university;
	(e) other experience that the Prime Minister considers relevant.
	(3) In this section "qualifying practitioner" means any of these—
	(a) a person who has a Senior Courts qualification, within the meaning of section 71 of the Courts and Legal Services Act 1990;
	(b) an advocate in Scotland or a solicitor entitled to appear in the Court of Session and the High Court of Justiciary;
	(c) a member of the Bar of Northern Ireland or a solicitor of the Court of Judicature of Northern Ireland."

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 1B.
	We return to the debate—the characteristics of the Lord Chancellor. This debate is essentially on one issue. Should future Lord Chancellors always, and without any possibility of an exception, be by law both lawyer and Lord?
	We have, by this Bill, transformed the role of the Lord Chancellor, created a new method of appointing judges, created a Supreme Court, and given effect to a new relationship between the judges and the Executive, with the Lord Chief Justice, and not the Lord Chancellor, becoming the head and leader of the judges in England and Wales.
	These changes are, as most people would accept, both far-reaching and overdue. The manner of their introduction should not obscure both the need for them and the fact that they have now been the subject of the most widespread consultation, and parliamentary scrutiny and have received widespread support. The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice said at Second Reading:
	"If it is given life, it [this Bill] will rank in importance with the great constitutional instruments of the past. We must ensure that that happens".—[Official Report, 7/12/04; col. 759.]
	In legislating for these changes, we have listened very carefully to the proposals for change made both before the Bill went through Parliament, and as the Bill went through its parliamentary stages. By far the most important part of the pre-parliamentary process was the agreeing of the concordat with the judges. They have accepted and, indeed, strongly support the new relationship between the judges and the Executive. As the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice stated in his speech at The Lord Mayor's dinner for Her Majesty's Judges:
	"What was previously uncertain becomes clearly defined, so both sides know what their respective rights and obligations are . . . The Concordat is universally endorsed by the judiciary as providing essential protection for the independence of the judiciary into the future".
	Let us also be clear as to the Lord Chief Justice's views regarding the nature of the Minister as set out in the Concordat. He said in his evidence to the Select Committee:
	"My firm support for the concordat reflects the fact that I see no difficulty with a Government Minister exercising any of the functions assigned to the Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs by the concordat. I do not consider that such a Minister requires any enhanced status or particular title to enable him or her to exercise those functions. There is benefit in that Minister being a lawyer. However, the Minister's ability to defend the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law and ensure that the courts are adequately resourced will, to an extent, depend upon his or her standing within the cabinet. This is a matter about which it is impossible to legislate, since it is in the hands of the Prime Minister of the day".
	The judges also recognise fully that the new arrangements involve the leadership of the judges moving from the Lord Chancellor to the Lord Chief Justice for England and Wales. Our policy involves that shift being clear. Neither we nor the judges want two heads of the judiciary—we want one, and the Bill reflects that.
	Those who see the change as being no more than the acceptance of the trend that the Lord Chancellor will no longer sit as a judge, such as the noble and learned Lords, Lord Howe of Aberavon and Lord Lloyd of Berwick, have not properly understood the scale of the change which this House and another place have voted for.
	In the light of those new arrangements, it is important to identify the nature of the job that the Lord Chancellor will perform in the new arrangements. He will be the Minister in charge of a department spending in excess of £3 billion on courts and legal aid. There are other things as well, but those are the two areas of biggest expenditure. Secondly, he will be the member of the executive who acts jointly either with the new Judicial Appointments Commission or the judiciary in appointing judges and in acting with them to ensure a well run justice system. Thirdly, he will be the guardian in the executive of the independence of the judiciary and, by extension, the rule of law.
	Currently, the Lord Chancellor is also Speaker of this House. As this House knows, we do not think it is appropriate any longer for the Lord Chancellor to continue as Speaker. After the proceedings on the Bill are concluded, we hope that the House will find an opportunity—taking into account the report of the committee chaired by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd—to debate the future of the Speakership.
	The old requirement for the Lord Chancellor to be a judge sitting in the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords made it beyond doubt that the Lord Chancellor had to be a Lord and a senior lawyer. Once that practical requirement goes, the issue needs to be looked at afresh in the context of the new job. The first two requirements of the new job—being a Minister and being the executive's part of the relationship with the judges—probably tend in favour of someone in the other place, although not necessarily and not conclusively. There will always be scope for Cabinet Ministers beyond the Leader to sit in this House, but it is obvious that responsibility for large amounts of public expenditure and for delivering important services to citizens throughout the country more easily sits in the other place. Equally, to be the representative of the executive who works in partnership with the judiciary may more effectively be achieved by someone who reflects the currents within the Commons. That many of the functions must be performed in an objective, independent, non-party way does not detract from that.
	The third function—protecting the independence of the judges and being the guardian of the rule of law in the government—is a critical role, but it needs to be properly understood. The Lord Chancellor is but part of the protection of those two important parts of our constitution. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Bingham of Cornhill, told the Constitutional Affairs Select Committee:
	"What protects (judicial independence) most is the tradition and the culture. I could say, and I feel quite sure we would all agree, that in over 20 years of holding judicial office none of us would ever have experienced any attempt whatever by anyone in any official position to influence any decision which any of us was about to make no matter how sensitive the case might be. The general public have no conception of the degree of fastidiousness which on the whole governments and officials show in this particular respect and sometimes go to almost unnecessary lengths to avoid anything which could even be construed as an attempt to influence the thing".
	The idea that the principle of the independence of the judiciary is not understood by those in the other place is fanciful. The idea that an ambitious politician of integrity in the Commons might not be the best person to defend the judges is wrong. Would a Tebbit, or a Merlyn-Rees, or a Whitelaw, or a Jenkins, or a Shirley Williams, or a Nigel Lawson, be inadequate champions of the judges? They would be excellent if given that job, and they could have been better than very many of the pool of lawyer Lords available at the time. I exclude from consideration, of course, all the Lord Chancellors of the time.
	You do not need to be a lawyer to know when judicial independence is being attacked. The powerful speeches made in this House attacking the undermining of the judiciary in Zimbabwe have seldom been made by the lawyers in this House. The principle of the defence of the rule of law underpins our constitution. All of us are subject to the law and equal before the law. The government of the day must obey the law, and they must not do anything that they know breaches the law. We are a parliamentary democracy; we want our laws to be made by our Parliament. The noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, suggested last week that there was a fundamental inconsistency in subscribing to the rule of law and being accountable to your constituents as a member of the other place. He said:
	"There must be a fundamental conflict between the statutory requirement of upholding the rule of law and, at the same time, the electoral requirement of doing the bidding of the majority".—[Official Report, 15/3/05; col. 1218.]

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, as far as the expenditure is concerned, money is allocated to each individual Minister, and then that individual Secretary of State is responsible for the expenditure of that money., That Secretary of State will take responsibility for it, particularly if the expenditure is poor. With great respect, it is wrong to say that there is not a particular responsibility on Secretaries of State in the way that the money is spent.
	I go back to the point that I was making. I quoted the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland. With respect—what rubbish. His view of democracy is wholly inconsistent with our constitution, and it has no basis in fact. The assumption that Members of the other place will press issues irrespective of the commitment to the rule of law is not reflected in our history. Our people want the rule of law and do not want to be ruled by lawyers. All too often, some lawyers dress up what is, in truth, a political debate as if it were a legal discussion. It is also noteworthy that those non-lawyers who have spoken in debates on this Bill have often done so in a manner that was almost apologetic for intruding on a private discussion. The rule of law is too important for its consideration to be reserved to lawyers.
	The noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, and the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, made similar attacks in debating the Prevention of Terrorism Bill. They said that had there been a Lord Chancellor of the traditional sort, the Bill would not have emerged in the form that it did. The Bill, in the form that it emerged, complied with the European Convention on Human Rights. There were legitimate issues about whether it was sufficient judicial involvement for judges to be involved before or shortly after an order was made. For the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, or the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, to suggest there was only one answer that complied with the rule of law, and that they knew what it was, revealed an imperviousness to respecting the views of others that so often lets the lawyer down.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, I accept that they would not always be the answer, but they are a pretty strong guide that the rule of law is not being breached.
	Regarding the prevention of terrorism, the current judges rightly took the view that it was an issue that Parliament must resolve, and in respect of which they should be silent. Another example is the admission of bad character evidence. The noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, said that our changes were "contrary to the rule of law". They most certainly were not, and no one else suggested that they were. They were plainly an issue to be determined by the politicians.
	The noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, referred to the ouster of the judicial review clauses—completely failing, in the course of his account, to see the significance of the role played by the Lord Chief Justice with regard to that issue. The Lord Chief Justice held out against the clause. He made proposals about how the use of the High Court would be just as quick as a scheme that did not use it. We listened and, eventually, agreed.
	Our Bill recognises the need for a new role for the Lord Chief Justice and defines what it should be. The effect of the changes already voted for by this House in the Bill has been to shift the judicial power and standing from the Lord Chancellor to the Lord Chief Justice. We should not think that a substitute for that aspect of the change is to force the Lord Chancellor into this House as a lawyer, come what may. Far from strengthening the office, it will, over time, weaken it.
	To place the Lord Chancellor in the Lords and reduce the pool from which he or she can be selected, having rightly deprived him of his judicial status, is a mistake. We should be doing all we can to entrench and strengthen the office. Allowing the holder to be from either House, allowing a strong and committed politician to hold the office, and allowing someone with a drive for change and improvement, both in the substance of our criminal law and procedure, and in the way the courts and their administration deal with cases, is a good thing and is entirely consistent with judicial independence and the rule of law. Sometimes a lawyer and a Lord will be best, but sometimes not. To place those constraints on the job when its holder is no longer head of the judiciary is permanently to undermine the office.
	Political drive does change things. It is what has changed the way much of criminal justice is done. Justice and legal aid need both political drive and independence—internally within government, to ensure that the values of our constitution are properly protected, and externally, to ensure that legitimate change occurs. Political strength should be allowed to be a factor in the decision, but it must be recognised that the independent element needs to be there as well.
	The other place has listened to your Lordships' concerns. It approached the views of this House in a spirit of compromise. The amendment in lieu from the other place acknowledges that experience as a Minister and a parliamentarian is desirable, as are legal skills gained through experience. It also ensures that distinguished legal academics are not excluded, and that experience of legal practice can be judged with more accuracy than a crude and arbitrary measure of years served. It allows experience to be measured by quality as well as quantity. However, it acknowledges the value of all these factors in a way that does not exclude potentially exceptional candidates for this vital office.
	The other place has twice expressed its view clearly and unequivocally. It has done so after full debate, and with no dissenting voices in the government party. Indeed, in the debate last week in the other place, it was only Members of the official Opposition who dissented from the Government's compromise amendment. Even the Scottish Nationalists supported the Government. The view of the other place had the support of the Labour and Liberal Democrat Benches here. The Tories oppose as do some, but far from all, Cross-Benchers.
	This is an issue of significance. Even the Opposition's Front Bench spokesman in the other place was forced to concede in last week's debate on the Government's compromise amendment that this is an important piece of legislation, which it is desirable that we see on the statute book.
	After proper debate on these remaining issues, the views of the other place should prevail.
	Moved, That the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 1B.—(Lord Falconer of Thoroton.)

Lord Kingsland: My Lords, I shall be speaking to all the amendments on the first line of the groupings' list; and also to the question of whether or not the Lord Chancellor should be a lawyer, which is the issue raised in the second line of amendments. The votes will deal with the issues separately. There will be one vote on whether the Lord Chancellor should be a Lord, and a second vote on whether he should be a lawyer.
	The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has made a number of remarks with which I would wish to take issue if I thought it appropriate to re-run arguments that have been run before your Lordships' House on several occasions in the past months. I think, however, that your Lordships are familiar by now with the crucial ingredients of this debate, and so I can be relatively succinct.
	What we wish to do in these amendments is simply enshrine in statute what has been a constitutional convention in this country for hundreds of years—that is, that the Lord Chancellor should be both a lawyer and a Member of your Lordships' House.
	Although changes have been made to the Lord Chancellor's role in the Bill, his fundamental responsibility remains the same; that is, to defend the rule of law in Cabinet against the depredations of his political colleagues. To do that, successfully, we believe that future Lord Chancellors, like past Lord Chancellors, should be both lawyers and Members of your Lordships' House.
	They should be lawyers because, often, the threat to the rule of law is not immediately obvious in political terms. Rather, it is contained in the often arcane details of criminal evidence. Such, for example, is true about the rules of propensity, to which the noble and learned Lord referred earlier. The propensity provisions introduced two years ago by the Government are plainly a fundamental threat to the presumption of innocence, and raise the question of the rule of law—a question that was never answered in Cabinet.
	In our view, there are two crucial components of the argument for retaining the Lord Chancellor in your Lordships' House. The first is that, unlike in another place, there are no alternative great offices in this House to which a Lord Chancellor can aspire. Consequently, he will be a political personality yet above ambition. Secondly, he is not elected on an electoral mandate. He has no conflicting responsibilities either to his party, in the context of what it was elected to do at the previous election, or to his constituents, with regard to what they wish him to do as their local Member.
	As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, reminded us during the previous debate, a Lord Chancellor who is both Lord and lawyer will be someone steeped in the culture of the law and the judiciary—a branch of the constitution that is independent of the Executive.
	That is the kernel of the issue, is it not? Underneath the question of lawyer and Lord lies the question of the appropriate checks in our constitution on the untrammelled powers of a powerful Executive dominating another place.
	There are two checks against the legislative proposals that emerge from another place. The first is the delaying powers of your Lordships' House. Your Lordships have recently had the opportunity to demonstrate how important those powers are, in relation both to the ouster clause and to the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Indeed, so successful have your Lordships been that one reads in the newspapers of the possibility that, in the highly unlikely event that the Government are re-elected, there could be threats to the length of delay under those powers.
	The other check on the Executive is a strong, independent Lord Chancellor sitting in the Cabinet. That check is under threat in this House this afternoon. The Government have tabled an amendment in another place, which reads as follows:
	"Lord Chancellor to be qualified by experience
	(1) A person may not be recommended for appointment as Lord Chancellor unless he appears to the Prime Minister to be qualified by experience.
	(2) The Prime Minister may take into account any of these—
	(a) experience as a Minister of the Crown;
	(b) experience as a member of either House of Parliament;
	(c) experience as a qualifying practitioner;
	(d) experience as a teacher of law in a university;"—
	and most crucially—
	"(e) other experience that the Prime Minister considers relevant".
	Well, really. That means that the Prime Minister can choose anybody he wants.
	The noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, and many of his Liberal Democrat colleagues have said, "Oh, but it's important to keep the door open for great men in another place such as Roy Jenkins". I would be the first to acknowledge that Roy Jenkins was a great man; but the provision would equally allow Mr Blunkett to become Lord Chancellor when the post next became vacant—a politician who, whatever his other merits, will not go down in history as someone who defended the rule of law. One must be very careful when one names great names to recall that many other people would have been or would be highly unsuitable.

Lord Lloyd of Berwick: My Lords, in due course I will move my amendment, but I believe that it will be for the convenience of the House that we address both amendments together. There will then be votes on each amendment separately, the one following immediately after the other.
	This is the fourth occasion on which we in this House have expressed our views on the future of the office of Lord Chancellor. On 13 July last year, we voted by a large majority of 240 to 208—the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, does not regard that as a large majority—to retain the existing office of Lord Chancellor. I emphasise "office", because we did more than merely save the name "Lord Chancellor", as the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has now properly accepted. On 7 December last year, the House confirmed what many of us thought had already been agreed—that the Lord Chancellor should continue as a very senior lawyer and a Member of this House. Last week, on 15 March, we reached the same conclusion.
	One would have thought that, by now, the Government would have learnt that this was a matter on which this House felt very strongly. We are right to do so, not only because the Lord Chancellor is, one might say, part of our scene in this House, but because he has a special constitutional role to fulfil—different from that of any other Minister of the Crown—as protector of the rule of law and defender of the independence of the judiciary. It may be worth reminding ourselves that that special position is now amply confirmed in the Bill itself by Clause 1, which states:
	"This Act does not adversely affect . . . the existing constitutional principle of the rule of law, or"—
	importantly—
	"the Lord Chancellor's existing constitutional role in relation to that principle".
	Later in the Bill, we find the new oath to be sworn by the Lord Chancellor. Clause 14(1) states that it is:
	"I ... do swear that in the office of Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain I will respect the rule of law, defend the independence of the judiciary and discharge my duty to ensure the provision of resources",
	and so on; I need read no further. That is an oath sworn by no other Minister of the Crown. It will be sworn by the Lord Chancellor, because it is to him that it specifically relates.
	One wonders what would have been the position if the Government had not decided, as they did on that June day two years ago, to abolish peremptorily the office of Lord Chancellor—a course in which they have now failed. It is difficult to believe that we should be arguing, as we are, that the Lord Chancellor should continue to be a lawyer and a Member of this House. That surely would have gone without saying.
	In his address to your Lordships this afternoon, the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor referred—more than once, I think—to the views of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice. I remind the Lord Chancellor and other Members of the House that it was the Lord Chief Justice himself who, in this House on 7 December, said that it should be a requirement of the Bill that the Lord Chancellor be a senior lawyer. By that, I understood him to mean a requirement written into the Bill, which is what there was until the amendment in the House of Commons. That view was expressed as not only the personal view of the Lord Chief Justice; he said that he also expressed it on behalf of the Judges' Council. We should pay very great heed to those views.
	The Government have got a great deal of what they wanted from the Bill; indeed, they have got almost all that they wanted. They have got the possibility of creating the Supreme Court, when a building can be found. They have got the Commission for Judicial Appointments, the concordat, and much else besides. The Government are now insisting on quite unnecessary and damaging changes to the historic office of the Lord Chancellor. Yet it is suggested that the view of the other place should prevail over ours. I read the debate there, as I suspect a number of your Lordships have, and I did not find the reasons in favour of the amendment convincing. I find the new amendments-in-lieu read by the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, completely vacuous. They mean nothing whatever, and would apply to every appointment made by the Prime Minister. They have nothing to do with the particular appointment about which we are concerned.
	In many cases, it would be right for this House to defer to the views of the other place, and to give them great weight as being the views of the elected Chamber. That point was strongly made during the passage of the counter-terrorism Bill. Members argued that Members of the House of Commons would have to answer for an explosion taking place in their constituency. They were clearly right to take that point. However, one wonders to what extent Members of the other place are currently troubled in their constituencies by whether the Lord Chancellor should be a Member of the House of Lords. It cannot be high on the agenda of things they worry about.
	By contrast, the future of the office of Lord Chancellor is peculiarly a matter within the province of this House. The fact is that the Lord Chancellor plays an important role here, as we all saw during the passage of counter-terrorism Bill. He is, as the noble Lord, Lord Elton, has often told us, our "second voice" in the Cabinet—I hope we may hear from him later in the course of this debate. The Lord Chancellor is that, but he is much more, too. It is his constitutional role, standing back from the political fray, which concerns me. To quote the noble and learned Lord, Lord Cooke of Thorndon, it is his role as,
	"an illustrious and universally respected lawyer who was able to speak with authority for all that the law represents".
	We all know that, for our constitution to work effectively, it depends on subtle checks and balances. One such check is the presence of a very senior Lord Chancellor in the Cabinet. Again,
	"he was a kind of guarantor or watchdog of legality at the heart of the constitution".—[Official Report, 11/10/04; col. 38.]
	We would do well to keep him there, and that is why I hope we will vote once more against the Commons amendments. I hope more fervently that we may not have to do so again.

Lord Goodhart: My Lords, imagine drawing up a job description for the new office of Lord Chancellor. What skills are needed? First, the competence to run an important government department, with a budget of some £3 billion per year, 25,000 staff, and the obligation for running the courts system in the whole of England and Wales. Secondly, the toughness to fight for the department in the annual battle with the Treasury to ensure that the DCA gets the funding that is needed for legal aid, for the courts system and for access to justice. Thirdly, the ability to work with the Commission for Judicial Appointments and with the Lord Chief Justice on the residual duties of the Lord Chancellor in judicial selection and discipline. Finally, the ability to act as the constitutional watchdog in the Cabinet.
	Imagine then drawing up a shortlist of candidates for this job. What sort of person do you need? Legal qualifications are certainly an advantage, but not a necessity—not even for the role of constitutional watchdog, where what is needed is not a detailed knowledge of the law, but a nose for what is constitutionally acceptable. Legal qualifications are less important than political skills, energy, independence and strength of character. These are not necessarily features of someone at the end of their career. Sometimes someone who comes from outside the narrow ranks of the legal profession may see the big issues more clearly, and may see the wood rather than the trees, where professionals cannot. After all, we have an Attorney General as the Government's legal adviser, and the Lord Chief Justice to speak for the judiciary of England and Wales. We have no need for the Lord Chancellor to duplicate those roles.
	When drawing up the shortlist, what about membership of your Lordships' House? In this context, membership of this House seems to be a matter of total irrelevance. Two restrictions, the need to be both a lawyer and also a Lord, will greatly reduce the pool of suitable candidates. What they will not do is ensure that we get a good person to do the job. I cannot say too often that any Prime Minister who wants a compliant and complacent Lord Chancellor will find one, with or without legal qualifications or membership of your Lordships' House. To take a possible scenario, admittedly a highly implausible one, let us assume that a future Prime Minister wishes to repeal the Human Rights Act. That is surely a proposal that would set a proper watchdog not only barking but howling. Yet I believe that any such future Prime Minister would have no difficulty whatever in finding a Lord Chancellor with legal qualifications and membership of your Lordships' House who, as a watchdog, would not utter even a growl. These restrictions cannot prevent the Prime Minister from making a bad appointment, but they can prevent him from making a good one. The effect of these restrictions is to ensure that today's job will be done by yesterday's man.

Lord Barnett: My Lords, I am sorry to intervene on this occasion as a non-lawyer, but I will not apologise as my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor told us not to. It is my first intervention on this Bill, and I want to make it clear that I have a lot of regard and respect for lawyers, and particularly for those in your Lordships' House. The noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, particularly impressed me during the debates on the then counter-terrorism Bill. He did not convince me to vote for the sunshine or sunset clause, because I had already decided to do so—but he did not convince me to change my mind.
	I only want to make two brief points, and neither will be on the rule of law. First, on whether the Lord Chancellor should be a lawyer and a Lord, I ask my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor whether, under this Bill or any amended one, there is any reason why the Lord Chancellor should not be either a junior Minister or a non-Minister, leaving the role of Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs anywhere—in either House?
	On the management of a budget of over £3 billion a year, I have had a little experience—it was a long time ago—in the amount of public expenditure that would go to particular departments. The management of that money was left, as my noble and learned friend said, in the hands of the departmental Secretary of State—although I tried to prevent them from spending too much on most occasions.
	Speaking as an accountant, if I had to choose someone to manage £3 billion or more, I would not necessarily choose an accountant because not all of them are good managers of funds. But if there was anyone I certainly would not appoint, it would be a lawyer—with great respect, even to my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor. That would not be my first choice. My first choice would be someone who I thought could manage a budget of £3 billion or more. However, under these amendments, which the Official Opposition and some Cross-Benchers appear to want, that apparently would not be the case. The hands of any Prime Minister would be tied if the job had to be filled by a lawyer—a senior lawyer, it has been said—and a Member of your Lordships' House.
	My noble and learned friend has pointed out that substantial changes, which have generally been accepted, have been made to the Bill regarding the role of the Lord Chancellor. In those circumstances, I am bound to say that the person appointed should have suitable ability in managing those sorts of funds. That is my first point.
	My second point concerns the question of opposing the other place. On 15 March, the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, said:
	"We need as many checks as we can get against an over-weaning Executive".—[Official Report, 15/3/05; col. 1241.]
	I very much agree with that. I am not sure that all noble and learned Lords or any other noble Lords opposite always agreed with it, but personally I agree. We must retain the right to ask the other place to think again. But how often should we, the unelected House, ask the elected House to think again? That serious question will be presented to your Lordships both now and in the future when we discuss the future powers of this House. I fear that, if we press ahead with this kind of amendment, it could result in bad decisions being taken about the powers of your Lordships' House. I am concerned to ensure that the powers of your Lordships' House are continued, certainly with regard to asking another place to think again, but I ask noble Lords also to think again about how often they ask the other place to do that.

Lord Ackner: My Lords, subject to interruptions, I can assure your Lordships that I shall not detain the House for more than three minutes. I also assure noble Lords that I shall not repeat any of the observations that I made on the previous occasion.
	In a lecture entitled "The Office of Lord Chancellor" given a year after he retired, Lord Hailsham, who had wide parliamentary experience in both Houses, stressed how vital it was to protect the independence of the judiciary. He then said:
	"But surely, it will be asked, everyone supports judicial independence".
	He went on to say: "Oh, do they?". He continued by reflecting on the House of Commons:
	"Certainly not . . . the back-benchers in the House of Commons, who constantly revile, frequently from inconsistent standpoints, individual judges or particular decisions, or what they imagine to be judicial qualities, and daily demand that individual judges be directed or rebuked (presumably by the Executive Government) to move in this direction or that or even that they should be removed from office".
	I suggest to your Lordships that that situation has in no way changed; if anything, it has got worse. The present Home Secretary and his predecessor made it quite clear that lawyers were their bête noir. It is clear that the present Home Secretary and his predecessor do not understand the basic fundamentals of the rule of law.
	I suggest to your Lordships that it would be quite wrong for the Lord Chancellor, with his obligations—I leave aside running the law courts and providing the court services—to have to carry out his functions, particularly defending the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law, in the hostile environment that I have just described.

Lord Morgan: My Lords, I want briefly to support, as I did last week, what the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has said, and I hope that your Lordships' House will not insist on its amendments. It was quite different in the case of the Prevention of Terrorism Bill. Then, a very large majority against the Bill was drawn from all our Benches, including myself, and I think that it was appropriate to challenge the House of Commons on that. Last week, the Bill was passed by a majority of about 14, drawn almost entirely from the Conservatives, and I do not think that it would give the right impression to challenge them.
	The belief is that the Lord Chancellor considers the rule of law. The opposition Benches appear to believe that the rule of law can be understood and articulated only by a lawyer—someone who has a professional background. I think that that is profoundly mistaken. The rule of law is a function of citizenship; it is not confined to a particular innate group of professionals.
	Furthermore, the assumption seems to be that the person appointed should be an elderly lawyer—someone who is near the end of his career. In other words, we are saying that it should be part of the law and custom of the constitution that the Lord Chancellor is an old man. I do not think that that is an appropriate view. It follows that, as there are very few lawyers in the House of Commons—

Lord Morgan: My Lords, I am not familiar with what I am sure is the noble Lord's extremely distinguished legal background, but it has been said repeatedly in this debate that the Lord Chancellor should be someone at the end of his career. That is the point that I was addressing, and I think appropriately so.
	Further, it has been said that, because there are very few lawyers in the House of Commons—there are virtually none on the Labour Benches—the Lord Chancellor must be a Member of the House of Lords. In any case, this afternoon and last week many suggested that the House of Commons is rather a disorderly and partisan place and that the quality of debate in this House is far superior, which frequently it is. I do not see why the Lord Chancellor has to be a lawyer. It is a matter not of professional expertise but of judgment—a matter of understanding and of our awareness not as lawyers but as citizens. I hope that the idea of citizenship is increasingly taking hold.
	Last week, the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, made a remark with which I very much agreed. He observed that the Lord Chancellor should be a lawyer by instinct. I go with that. I think that that is a very good way of putting it. But being a lawyer by instinct is not the same as being a lawyer by background, and I would draw a distinction between the two.
	I also think that, while there should be the widest choice, in many ways it would be highly appropriate to have the Lord Chancellor in the House of Commons, particularly—as I said last week; I will not repeat myself—in the light of the Prevention of Terrorism Bill. The judicial review in cases involving the actions of the Executive in relation to alleged terrorists should be considered in front of the elected representatives of the people rather than anything more enclosed.
	It is extraordinarily patronising to say that people in the House of Commons are unable to produce appropriate representatives—or people as appropriate as us—in dealing with these matters. It is also erroneous to say that they are liable to confuse parliamentary sovereignty with the rule of law. As a historian I take my stand on the distant past: the Act of Settlement 1701 enshrined both what was then called parliamentary supremacy and an independent judiciary. It was perfectly possible to combine the two concepts and to see the House of Commons as the main body concerned with them both. I am happy to take my stand on 1701 rather than on some of the arguments that we have had this afternoon.
	I do not think that one should make broad assumptions about the qualities of people in either House of Parliament. The Lord Chancellor deals with constitutional principles, with intellectual, ideological and philosophical issues, and there is no reason why such a person should not be in the House of Commons. Indeed, such a person should be in the House of Commons; he should face the elected Members and be ensconced in what a famous little Welsh attorney called,
	"the great assize of the people".

Lord Howe of Aberavon: My Lords, I had not intended to intervene yet again on this topic, but I feel compelled to do so, driven logically by a phrase used by the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, when he said that we should be careful to allow the Commons to have the casting voice on such an amendment.
	I have been thinking about what kind of amendment this is. If one looks at it in the context of the Bill as a whole, the Bill contains a substantial number of measures that have been long debated and on which there has been a large amount of agreement across the professions and across the body politic.
	The establishment of a Supreme Court is a well argued case that we have examined carefully. Some of us still do not accept the necessity for it, but it is a respectable proposition. The appointment of a Judicial Appointments Commission likewise has the same quality. Those are the Bill's core measures.
	But what about this kind of amendment? Where is the intellectual analysis and careful thought that has led to the emergence of this proposition? It emerged like a flash of lightening as a result of some still undisclosed controversy in No. 10 Downing Street on 11 June two years ago. If anyone until that moment had suggested that the nation's stability and the progress of the new Labour revolution, or anything else, had depended on the sweeping away of the office of the Lord Chancellor, the world would have been astonished.
	So indeed was everyone when that puff of decision making emerged on our political stage. Everyone in the Lord Chancellor's Department was amazed and aghast. Ever since, it has fallen to the hapless but increasingly unhapless and confident noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor to defend what looked at the time indefensible. He has not made a bad job of it, but it is a case for which the burden of proof rested fairly and squarely on those who had to justify the eccentricity and unexpectedness of the Prime Minister's original decision.
	Everything else can be sensibly presented, but here is a provision that we seek arguments to justify. We find ourselves living in a world in which, until the moment before the announcement was made, the Government were defending robustly and confidently in this country to every committee of both Houses and to the Council of Europe the legitimacy, the importance and the crucial nature of the Lord Chancellor's unique office.
	We have come a long way since then; semi-respectable arguments have been advanced, but I have yet to see any argument that says that by making this change and throwing aside a historic office that has been of great importance in government after government we are getting any improvement. Attempts have been made. The noble Lord, Lord Barnett, used it as an excuse to launch a modest attack on my profession, saying that lawyers are not particularly well qualified to manage money.
	Neither are accountants, farmers, engine drivers, doctors or trade union leaders, but people from all those groups have been appointed Ministers of the Crown and for better or for worse we have struggled to do the job as well as we can, often with the benefit of surveyance from someone as robust and fierce as the noble Lord, Lord Barnett. We have all had to make our best of that job.
	The argument advanced on that narrow front is that this is a huge department with a budget of £3.5 billion per year; it cannot possibly be managed by anyone from this House and it is ridiculous to impose it on this House. But no one uttered a squeak when the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, was appointed in this House as Minister in charge of the Department for International Development, which has a budget of £3.5 billion-plus. No one said that that was a constitutional affront, so there is no substance in that case.
	We are driven back to counsels of despair, saying that on a good day it is possible to identify some remarkably outstanding political leaders, like Roy Jenkins, who is the case always cited—no doubt there are others, even my noble friend Lord Lawson on a good day—who might have been well qualified for the job. That case was made by the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, rather in the way in which one drafts an advertisement for the Guardian public sector pages: with all the strange preoccupations and qualifications necessary for the job, and one can make a respectable job of doing it.
	However, none of this amounts to the beginning of a case for making a decision, in order to legitimise the will of an eccentric Prime Minister, to sweep away an office that has served us well with a senior lawyer and Member of this House in the job. If one looks back at all the documentation produced since that decision was initially taken, one finds almost everyone—and the House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee—saying that ideally the job is a job for a senior legal figure towards the end of his career.

Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I shall add a few words. I hesitated to do so, as the debate has been inundated with lawyers, but I took encouragement from the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, who said that he did not mind taking part even though he is not a lawyer. I can draw a comparison with him.
	I am deeply hesitant about the Bill. The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said that this is a significant issue that will transform the role of the Lord Chancellor. So it is. But my noble and learned friend Lord Howe of Aberavon pointed out that various parts of the Bill, such as the Supreme Court and the appointment of judges, were justifiably considered, and we lost over them. That was very generous him.
	I find it quite alarming that there will be a new Supreme Court, at a cost of £50 million, and that the Members of the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords will be transferred to it so that they will no longer be Members of this House and able to advise your Lordships. It was interesting that today, and on previous occasions, the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor quoted the words of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice. How could he quote those words? It was because the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice has the right to be here and speak. In future, of course, he will not be here. Those are pretty staggering changes.
	Now the noble and learned Lord wants to do away with, if not the office of Lord Chancellor, then its role as we know it. In so doing, he will oblige your Lordships to have a Speaker. These are very significant changes. It is all very fine for the noble and learned Lord to say that the House of Commons has considered them and that we ought to agree to them, but I take great exception to these fundamental constitutional changes.
	By this Bill, the noble and learned Lord has savaged the role of the Lord Chancellor; he has savaged the House of Lords by denying the attendance of the Law Lords in your Lordships' House; and he is forcing on your Lordships' House the office of a Speaker—as yet untried, and largely unwelcome.
	The noble and learned Lord is very competent and agreeable, and he is also a thunderingly fine advocate. But the trouble with being a very good advocate is that people do not necessarily know when the cause you are justifying is good or bad. The noble and learned Lord has the ability to put a very bad case very well.
	I can only offer this bit of advice, which I may already have given to your Lordships, but as it would be impertinent—indeed arrogant—to think that your Lordships would remember anything that I have ever said before, I am happy to repeat it. I am referring to what the late Lord Fisher of Canterbury said, which was that there was no unreasonable argument that could not be proved reasonable by reason.
	I suggest that this is a very unreasonable argument, even though reason has been deployed.

Lord Mackay of Clashfern: My Lords, I have not taken part in such debates for some time, but I feel that I ought to say something at this juncture in view of the fact that, thankfully, I have had some experience of the office.
	It is fundamental in dealing with these matters in this House that we should have respect for the views of the other place, which should be reciprocated. I was a little stunned that it was said that this House was guilty of concerted amnesia, or something of that sort. I remember very well the changes that have been made to the role of the Lord Chancellor.
	I always find the views of the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, extremely interesting—and, usually, influential. He said that he would not wish to give the management of a budget of £3 billion to a lawyer. For the past eight years or so, our country has been managed by someone whose qualifications are that of a lawyer. He had other qualifications as well, of course.
	I shall deal first with the question of whether it is desirable for the Lord Chancellor to be a lawyer—in other words, whether it is a proper part of his qualifications. The noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, has made much of the fact that there are qualified people who are bad and qualified people who are good. That is not a reason for dispensing with qualifications.
	One of the important roles of the Lord Chancellor in our Cabinet government is to see that legal advice is taken when necessary. He is not the government's legal adviser. That is plain, and a good Lord Chancellor respects that. Apart from anything else, if any difficulties arise, he does not have to shoulder the responsibility. He is responsible for legal advice being taken when required, so that the government do not land themselves in difficulties. You need to be a lawyer, otherwise, unless you are superhuman, you cannot detect whether legal advice is required. It is often obvious, but sometimes it is not. For very good constitutional reasons, the Attorney General is not a member of the Cabinet.
	Discussions can produce a requirement for legal advice, which is one of the most important functions of the Lord Chancellor. It is a subsidiary to his general responsibility for maintaining the rule of law to see that the government take legal advice when necessary to ensure that their actions are lawful.
	A good example of what can happen when that position is not obtained was shown on 12 July 2003.

Lord Mackay of Clashfern: My Lords, it must be old age creeping in. It was June 2002.
	I do not know the inner secrets of these matters, but the then Lord Chancellor was leaving office and something was to be done. Those in responsible positions in the Government thought that the office of the Lord Chancellor could be abolished overnight by Prime Ministerial fiat. People recognise that I had a role in those matters in the past, and many people who are neither politicians nor particularly interested in politics, have wondered how that could happen. How could it come about that the head of the Executive of this country should have been so mistaken? It shows how vital it is to have at the centre of government and part of the Cabinet someone who is responsible to see that the Cabinet do not make fools of themselves by seeking to take action that is manifestly absurd in law.
	I hope that that does not happen often, but it is a pretty prominent illustration of when it did happen. To include a reference to "legal expertise" would be a wise insertion in the clause. I wonder what other relevant experience there could be. It is essential for a Lord Chancellor properly to give effect to his responsibilities in relation to the rule of law. I do not mean only in general terms, which anyone with sufficient judgment and quality could do. A number of such qualities have been mentioned today, and I would not wish to challenge them. But when it comes to advising in detail on the legal issues, the Lord Chancellor needs to have a legal background.
	How old he should be is a matter of judgment. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, was considerably younger than me when he took office, and the present Lord Chancellor is even younger. I am not absolutely certain about that, but I have that feeling. He certainly has all the vitality of youth.
	With regard to being a Member of this House, I think that there is an advantage in being somewhat detached from the central assize of our nation's politics. To be at the centre is a difficult place for a Lord Chancellor to carry out his functions. I have no experience of being in the other place, but I have listened to the arguments of those who were there at the time. I have a feeling, which I put to your Lordships for what it is worth, that it will be easier and more likely for the Lord Chancellor effectively to exercise his office in protecting the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law if he is away from the white heat of political debate in the slightly less political atmosphere of this House. The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said that this House is changing. I have no doubt that that is so, but there is still a difference. Anyone who studies the two Houses will agree that there is a difference between and that difference is quite important.
	I am glad to see that the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsay of Cartvale, has returned to her place, which reminds me that lawyers are not necessarily founts of wisdom. They make mistakes. I can say the same of elected people. Election is not a guarantee of infallibility; neither does nomination, which applies to most noble Lords, come with a certificate of infallibility. Sometimes the experience of those who have been properly nominated in this House may be valuable in a constitutional matter, which this undoubtedly is.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, of course the ICAO digitised photograph requirement is one thing, but the noble Baroness will know that three methods are currently under consideration. The first is the iris image, the second relates to facial recognition and the third is fingerprints. By fashioning our scheme so that it can respond to those three different types of identification, we are better preparing ourselves for the future.
	My noble friend is right to point out that DNA is not being used. As I said, there has been much debate and concerns have been expressed about the inappropriate use of such data and whether they are truly to be used simply as a means of identification only. We think that by restricting the data to facial biometrics, fingerprints and iris images, we will draw a line that makes it crystal clear that this is for identification and no other purpose.
	Biometrics are a new concept and some have asked us the obvious question: will it work? I can reassure noble Lords that the National Physical Laboratory carried out a study in 2003 and published a report which concluded that:
	"In principle, fingerprint or iris recognition can provide the identification performance required for unique identification over the entire UK adult population".
	Not only that, but the United Kingdom Passport Service has also carried out a trial of biometric enrolment of a sample of some 10,000 individuals to test the practicalities of enrolling biometrics. This has included using a mobile enrolment unit that could travel to rural areas as well as to offshore islands.
	In addition, we are looking very carefully at the real and practical difficulties that might be faced by some groups of individuals, for example the elderly, the housebound and those with special needs because of illness or disability. I cannot give detailed answers today on how we will deal with every one of those groups when the identity card scheme is introduced. However, I can say that officials in the identity cards programme are in contact with representatives of special interest groups, for example the Royal National Institute for the Blind, and I give a commitment that we will look sensitively at all genuine reasons for special treatment in the process of obtaining an identity card. We have recently undertaken research among race, faith, disabled and other groups to identify the special needs of particular groups in the design of the scheme. This includes people with hearing difficulties, with impaired sight and with arthritis. We will be publishing the research later this month.
	The legislation allows for this and Clause 41(4) makes clear that any regulations made under the Bill can make different provision for different cases, and can provide for exemptions and exceptions.
	The identity cards scheme is being introduced not only as a convenient way for individuals to prove their identity, it is also necessary in the wider public interest. This is the second arm of the statutory purposes as set out in Clause 1(3)(b) and (4). The public interest is defined in five ways, and I think it would be helpful if I deal with each of them in turn.
	First, we have national security. Identity cards on their own will not stop the risk of terrorism. However, we have been advised that they will help. We have also been advised that more than one third of terrorist suspects are known to have used false identities. We should be clear that identity cards will not somehow prevent suicide bombers, but they will disrupt the activities of those who aid and abet terrorism by hiding behind multiple and false identities. By making it harder or impossible to assume a false identity, or to use multiple identities, it will be much more difficult for terrorists to ply their trade, and there is no doubt that the introduction of identity cards will help the police and security services in their work.
	The second part of the public interest definition is the prevention or detection of crime. I can reassure your Lordships that the police will have no new powers to demand proof of identity or to require people to produce an identity card in the street as a result of this Bill. It will be possible for the police to seek information from the national identity register to check an individual's identity with or without that individual's consent, provided that it can be justified for the prevention or detection of crime.
	In the case of biometric information, Clause 23 means that the police will have first to check their own records before seeking the provision of information from the register about a suspect's photograph or fingerprints, and Parliament will also be able to agree specific rules as provided for in Clause 23 on how information will be provided to the police or other organisations. These will include provisions such as the level in the organisation at which the request must be approved.
	We have also protected the most sensitive area of the register—the records of how the card or database entry has been checked previously (paragraph 9 of Schedule 1). This information can be provided only for purposes connected with the prevention and detection of serious crime or for the existing statutory purposes of the intelligence and security agencies.
	The third part of the public interest definition is the enforcement of immigration controls. Most people will be entered on the register when they apply for a designated document. Clauses 4 and 10 provide for this. It is intended to designate British passports issued to United Kingdom residents. Once designated, anyone over the age of 16 applying for a British passport will be entered on the national identity register and will be issued also with an identity card. The passport and identity card will be issued as a package and it will no longer be an option to obtain a passport on its own once it has been designated.
	In the case of foreign residents, the intention is to designate the residence documents issued to foreign nationals and for these to double as an identity card. What this means is that, once designated, anyone applying for these documents and legally resident in the United Kingdom will have had their identity verified to the highest standard and will have been issued with a biometric ID card. This will act as a major deterrent to illegal immigration as eventually everyone resident here legally will have a biometric ID card which will confirm their identity as well as their right to reside here and, if they are only a temporary resident, such as a foreign student, any limits on their stay.
	The fourth part of the public interest definition is the enforcement of prohibitions on illegal working. One of the key pull factors for illegal immigrants is our healthy employment market, combined with the fact that even the most reputable of employers can find it is too easy to be hoodwinked by forged papers.
	We are stepping up our enforcement activity against illegal working. During 2004 the Immigration Service carried out 1,618 operations against illegal working. In the future, the possession of an identity card which confirms an individual's right to work in the United Kingdom will make it much easier for the vast majority of legitimate employers to ensure that they comply with the law. It will also make prosecution of unscrupulous employers simpler.
	The final public interest is to secure the efficient and effective provision of public services. Clauses 15 to 17 allow Parliament to approve regulations for public services to require an identity card to be produced before an individual accesses a particular service. This is not a "one size fits all" provision. Parliament will have to approve individual regulations for individual services and there are obligations on the Government to consult about any proposals. However, the principle is surely right that when seeking access to a public service such as free health treatment, or applying for the payment of state benefits, an individual should be asked to produce an identity card that confirms his or her identity as a first step in proving entitlement to the service. Of course, as we have always made clear, this will not interfere with the delivery of emergency healthcare or other services. As I have already explained, we expect that most people will obtain their ID card when they apply for a British passport or a foreign national's residence permit.
	However, the Government have been clear that the identity cards scheme which is being introduced is designed to become compulsory. We therefore need to have the debate on the principle of compulsion now. The provisions on compulsion are in Clauses 6, 7 and 9 and are about the timing of compulsion and the precise categories of people who will be required to register. It would be possible to phase in this requirement for different categories at different times and to exempt certain groups, such as, perhaps, the very elderly. The Government must publish their reasons for compulsion, they must allow both Houses of Parliament to comment on their proposition for compulsion and must take account of these comments before laying an order before both Houses. Under this so-called super-affirmative procedure both Houses must then agree to the order setting a date for compulsion.
	The means of enforcing the compulsion to register are via civil financial penalties. It will not be a criminal offence to fail to register when the scheme is compulsory because we do not see the need to burden the police and the criminal courts with enforcing the scheme. We will use civil means. Clauses 34 and 35 set out the procedure for objecting to or appealing against any civil penalty that may be imposed.
	I express my gratitude to the Joint Committee on Human Rights for its contribution to the debate on the Government's proposals, and welcome both its letter to my right honourable friend the Home Secretary and its subsequent report.
	As my right honourable friend said in his reply of 8 February to the committee, which was published in its report, the Government are confident that the identity card proposals are compatible with their obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights. The fact is that 21 of the 25 EU member states already have an identity card scheme. Apart from the United Kingdom and Ireland only Latvia and Denmark do not currently have ID cards and Latvia has already announced plans to introduce them next year (2006) and Denmark already has a Central Person Register which contains identity and address details with a unique number to identify every resident.
	The committee took the view that it is not the compulsory issue of ID cards which raises convention issues, but the storage and disclosure of information on the register. The Government believe that the limitations which have been placed on the information which may be held on the register and the safeguards which regulate the information which may be disclosed from the register ensure that the interference with Article 8 is proportionate.
	I can confirm to the House that a delegated powers memorandum on the Bill was submitted to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee on 7 March of this year.
	The Identity Cards Bill is a piece of enabling legislation and so it cannot be expected to include all the detailed administrative procedures for the card scheme on the face of the Bill. Although there are a large number of delegated powers—some 60 in all—many of the separate powers relate to the same issue, for example the application process for an ID card and the format of the card itself. Many of the precise administrative details will depend on the continuing work of designing the scheme and will need to be finalised much nearer the launch of the identity cards scheme which is currently planned for 2008. These details will also, rightly, be subject to change and amendment after the identity cards scheme is launched so as to take account of future developments.
	The Government will, of course, look very carefully at the views of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee on the Bill, when its report is published.
	We intend that the first biometric identity cards should be issued in 2008 and there will be further opportunities between now and then for your Lordships to look at the detailed provisions to be set out in secondary legislation.
	The simple fact is that the possession of a clear, unequivocal and unique form of identity—in the shape of a card linked to a database holding biometrics—will offer clear benefits to us all. That is why 80 per cent of the public in recent surveys say that they support the introduction of ID cards.
	I shall, of course, listen with great interest to the points that noble Lords have to make both on the Bill itself but also on the practical implementation of the identity cards scheme—something which we have become very accustomed to hearing from the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay. However, the Government are convinced that the introduction of identity cards is in the interests of the nation.
	I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, will confirm her party's unequivocal support for the principle of identity cards—which I understand is the clearly expressed view of the leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition in another place.
	The current debate on identity cards began over three years ago, and we have proceeded in a measured way through consultation on the principles and, most recently, on draft legislation. We have no intention of wavering, and the Government are now determined to press ahead with the introduction of identity cards starting, on current plans, in 2008. The Bill sets out a clear legal framework for the scheme.
	Identity cards will provide a means for everyone legally resident in this country to assert their right to be here and to help them gain access to the services to which they are justly entitled. Identity cards will help to preserve national security and assist the work of the law enforcement agencies. The Bill will enable the public to have the identity card systems that they say they want. I commend the Bill to the House.
	Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Baroness Scotland of Asthal.)

Lord Dholakia: My Lords, I add my thanks to the Minister for introducing this Bill in your Lordships' House. I also ask her to convey our thanks to the Minister of State, Des Browne, for briefing colleagues earlier in the day.
	We do not have the five tests demanded by the Opposition. To me, they are as irrelevant as those introduced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer with regard to monetary union. It is a shame that we will not have time on our side to tease out many of the issues raised by the Minister. The reasons are simple. We are in an almost unreal situation. On the one hand, there is anticipation of a general election, and on the other, Bills are being pushed through your Lordships' House that are unlikely to end up on the statute book for some time to come.
	I do not believe that scrutiny and revision, which require the Committee and Report stages of the Identity Cards Bill, will be reached—so why this haste? The Government, of course, have their own reasons, which have nothing to do with the Bill being enacted. I suspect this may be another matter on the Government's agenda of "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime".
	Whatever the reasons, it is right that I should set out my party's position on this Bill. We do not believe that ID cards will work with regard to tackling terrorism—although that is what David Blunkett told us in the first instance—nor that they will help to tackle benefit or health fraud. It would be helpful to have some recent data to establish the Government's case on these points.
	ID cards have serious cost implications. The system is flawed, and has civil liberty implications, as pointed out by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay.
	I shall start with some of the possible assumptions made by the Government in the consultative document on Entitlement Cards and Identity Fraud. We are told that a card scheme could be a powerful weapon in combating illegal immigration. If that is the case, why do we not sort out the chaotic immigration procedure that lets in illegal immigrants? If we had proper, managed migration, with a system of admission of those economic migrants whose services we require, and a proper method of dealing with those who are genuinely being persecuted and are seeking refuge, ID cards would become less relevant.
	ID cards cannot be forced upon people who enter this country. They are designed for those who are lawfully resident here. How ID cards could stop illegal entrants baffles the imagination. We have said we would support a system of immigration based on the United Kingdom's needs. We will support a system designed to help refugees and deal effectively with those who enter the country unlawfully. ID cards would do no such thing. To set up this aspect of policy as an end to all illegal immigration is just not true. It will not work. It may placate tabloid newspapers, but its impact would be negligible.
	It is obvious that ID cards are unlikely to be introduced in Britain straight away. The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Patricia Hewitt, has acknowledged that the process will take many years. If that is the case, why is it necessary to bring the Bill forward at the fag-end of this parliamentary term? It does not give us time to consider the framework carefully.
	According to the Government, we will not have to carry ID cards. If that is the case, how will they be effective against terrorism? Even if they were made compulsory, would they stop terrorism? Of course we acknowledge the serious threat of terrorism, but in the majority of cases that have been identified, terrorists have not used false or multiple identities. Past evidence in the UK, the United States and other countries demonstrates that terrorists are capable of carrying out atrocities without changing their identities.
	ID cards are of little relevance to those who are hell-bent on destroying themselves. We may know someone's identity, but that does not tell us what they are about to do. There is the classic case of Richard Reid, the so-called shoe bomber. Even if he had had an identity card, would it have given a clue about what he was going to do? Those who wish to destroy themselves do not care whether they have an identity document or not. That pattern is well established among suicide bombers.
	The Government's argument is seriously flawed if they think that this is the way to stop terrorists or their activities. I do not dispute that an identity card would provide people who were lawfully resident in the UK with a means of confirming their identity to a high degree of assurance. The problem is that it stops neither terrorism nor illegal immigration. No country has found a foolproof system, and Great Britain is no exception.
	The Government's other objective is to help people to gain entitlement to products and services provided by both public and private sectors, particularly those who may find it difficult to do so at present. We do not dispute that. There is benefit and health fraud, but I fail to see what that has to do with identity. A vast amount of health and benefit fraud that occurs in the United Kingdom would not stop through the availability of identity cards. Is it not the case that only 5 per cent of it involves individuals pretending to be someone whom they are not?
	The cost implication of the introduction of ID cards is still a mystery. How much would it cost? What technology have we in mind? This is a major national investment that requires intense scrutiny. It has to be evaluated on the basis of other cards and identity documents that many people possess. I acknowledge that we are simply discussing the framework at this stage, but surely the Government have in mind the ultimate cost implication. I was delighted that Des Browne actually gave some figures in the briefing note that he supplied, but they are still not complete because of the large number of reading machines that will be required in all sorts of places, for which the cost would be considerable.
	Last week, I met representatives of LaserCards, which I understand provides the green card technology to the US Government. In essence, three types of card have been identified. The first type securely stores information on the card itself that can be read offline. The second type requires a central database to be accessed, which is the system often used by banks. The third type is a hybrid of both systems. Will there have to be reading equipment in every post office, benefit office, hospital and doctor's practice? Who will operate the system? Who will be responsible for protection of readable data? Does the Data Protection Act apply? What guarantees are there that data will not be accessed for other purposes?
	The Government have not had much luck with computerised services established in the area of criminal justice. We will need a lot of convincing that a foolproof system that will not break down is available. Even before the questions have been answered, we have a unique situation in Wales. Under devolved powers, the National Assembly for Wales can take its own decision whether to have ID cards in relation to health provision. It says that it will not ask for ID cards, so we have an example of the first unilateral declaration of independence coming from the Labour heartland.
	Let me now come to the regulatory impact assessment. There is serious concern about complex procedures, and then there are cultural problems. We have seen the impact of stop and search on our black and minority-ethnic communities. I appreciate the Minister's concern on the matter and her assurances, but she has not satisfied me that police will not ultimately have access to the relevant information if they suspect that a crime has been committed. The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants has produced research evidence from Europe that suggests that,
	"black and ethnic minority . . . nationals could be disproportionately targeted on the basis of race for identity checks by police, immigration officials or other public service officials".
	Then there is the risk of conflict with the European Convention on Human Rights and other international convention law.
	The other issue identified by the regulatory impact assessment is that,
	"only certain groups will be asked for proof of identity".
	I suspect that, like the anti-terrorist legislation that caused so many problems for the Government, the provision is likely to be considered disproportionate in its use, discriminatory on foreign nationals, and adversarial in its impact on black and ethnic minority people here.
	We are certainly entitled to know the cost implication of a fully operational ID card system. So far, it is difficult because the figures keep changing. Would the Government make public the Office of Government Commerce's Gateway review documents? There cannot be any commercial confidentiality about them. Should we not be entitled to information that is given to commercial companies? We want to know the true cost of a system when fully operational and the financial contribution of each citizen in the UK, together with the cost of a biometric readable passport that we are obliged to produce. It is then that we can argue about what alternatives to ID cards are available to us, such as more police, more intelligence officers and more spending on secure borders. There are better ways of spending that money.
	The other point that I wish to address concerns the database, on which the Home Affairs Committee commented. It identified two issues—whether the Government have the capacity to run a system of ID cards, given their awful record on IT systems; and the implications for civil liberties, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay. My noble friend Lord Phillips of Sudbury is upset that he is unable to participate in the debate, as he is speaking on the Charities Bill. He is chair of the advisory panel established by Liberty to assist with a major project on privacy and identity. That report will be available when the Bill comes to the House again before long, as I suspect that it will.
	We have reached a stage where successive legislation has eroded the delicate relationship between the individual and the state, as rightly pointed out in a number of government reports. That is also a conclusion reached by the Select Committee on the Constitution. There is so much information available on citizens of this country—their shopping habits, the products they buy, and their financial standing—which is a by-product of the credit card system. Then there is the passport, a document that sets out your citizenship and the rights that go with it. There is an insatiable appetite on the part of the Government to continue to obtain more information under the guise of tackling fraud, terrorism and illegal immigration.
	This morning, I read the report of the London School of Economics on the identity project. It is an assessment of the Bill and its implications, and it concluded:
	"All identity systems carry consequential dangers as well as potential benefits. Depending on the models used, identity systems may create a range of new and unforeseen problems. These include the failure of systems, unforeseen financial costs, increased security threats and unacceptable imposition on citizens. The success of a national identity system depends on a sensitive, cautious and co-operative approach involving all key stakeholder groups including an independent and rolling risk of assessment and a regular review of management practices. We are not confident that these conditions have been satisfied in the development of the Identity Cards Bill. The risk of failure in the current proposals is therefore magnified to the point where the scheme should be regarded as a potential danger to the public interest and to the legal rights of individuals".
	There must be a time when we should call a halt. That time is now. If the purpose of this Second Reading is simply to identify for political parties those who are against this legislation, let it be so. In the coming weeks we shall continue to proclaim that we are against the Bill. I now look forward to listening to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Ballyedmond.

Lord Ballyedmond: My Lords, I confess that I feel like a blushing maiden this evening, on the occasion of my first speech to your Lordships' House.
	Identity cards are not new to society. They have been in use for a very long time in many countries which we consider to be normal, democratic societies. With the evolution of democracy, free society now has the conundrum of how to balance the rights and freedoms to be enjoyed by the individuals on the one hand with the collective benefits of those who comprise the state on the other. There are those who will say we are at war with terrorists and criminals. Whatever the position, we must be prepared to render impotent any attack on our democratic way of life.
	We were able to fight and win past wars with the intelligent use of might and manpower. This alone is no longer a viable means to counter the modus operandi of the subverters, which has experienced a paradigm shift, or the increased influence of political and religious fanaticism, where fear of death is removed. The suicidal protagonist believes himself glorified by his sacrifice. Organised crime, likewise, has at its service today's most sophisticated technology and the means of ready communication and movement. The political focus in modern-day Europe has shifted to the rights of the individual to such an extent that those rights in many cases must be accommodated by an unwilling state. This is evidenced by the busy schedule of the European Court of Human Rights.
	This development of the focus on the individual and his rights can often cause antagonism as a grant of a right to one may be a deprivation of another. This inherent conflict is at the basis of the major issue which will confront us in the consideration of this Bill. Here we potentially open the door to allow curtailment of a freedom in the hope of preventing others from removing our greater freedom. Here we must set the scales and find the balance. It will not be easy.
	It would be wise at the outset to ensure that the appropriate safeguards, independent of the administration and operation of the powers granted, be set in place so that any abuse will be detected and dealt with, and that the controls which Parliament invests in this Bill are ensured for us all. If we have the protection that our details are not available to parties other than the proper agents of the government of a democracy in the implementation of laws which we support, and our details are utilised only for the stated purposes, what have we to fear? For my part, I am prepared to accept some curtailment of this freedom to help protect our general liberty.
	We must examine the facts as they are today. The dangerous forces which can confront us now are not tangible. They are highly organised, globalised and well- managed. They generally rely on the international, as well as the national, network for support. In a world in which freedom of movement has evolved and has been optimistically accepted as the basis for the structure of our future society, these forces effectively utilise the four ingredients necessary for terrorism and for crime. These are: motivation, stealth, money, and a sympathetic community. I hope that the presently proposed legislation will help to identify those involved and the places where the terrorists and criminals derive their recruitment, their supplies and their shelter.
	There is also, of course, the threat of single terrorists or criminals, who are very difficult to detect. They can operate on a vast scale, utilising the advanced scientific and technological developments available. Weapons of mass destruction can be deployed with the minimum use of manpower. I do not think I am being unrealistic or alarmist in stating this. It is crucial that we do not allow the emotive and exciting subject of individual rights to obfuscate our minds when considering the issue of national and indeed collective international security. We must keep these potentially antagonistic elements in context in this debate.
	I am pleased to observe this Government's increasing attention to the detection and prevention of national and international money laundering. This Bill should also help to reduce the high level of crime that we have from credit card fraud, health and benefits fraud, and the black economy. If this can be controlled, the enormous amount of money that is presently being defrauded and being spent on the detection and prosecution of such fraud will be saved, and will become available for improvements for us all.
	The present proposal by the Government to implement the use of identity cards has been met with a mixed reaction. It seems that many people are suggesting what should not be done, rather than asking what should be done. We have our security services to thank for the fact that we are not debating this issue in the wake of an attack in the style of September 11. Indeed this is one of the benefits with which an effective security policy provides us. I do not need to remind your Lordships of the many enemies who await an opportunity to strike. I believe the most relevant element of global terrorism is stealth, and ask everyone to bear this in mind when debating this topic. It was once said that the best trick that the Devil ever played was convincing mankind that he did not exist. I am not alone in my belief that the enemy exists, and feel that, because we have not experienced an attack such as 9/11 on our own soil, we may be in danger of losing sight of the terrible impact which such an attack would have. I welcome the optimism of those who feel that this risk is not real, but I do so cautiously.
	Recent intelligence suggests that terrorists and criminals are often in co-operation and, on occasion, inextricably linked. Any reasonable and proportionate means which stifle these activities must be supported, so it is to the implementation of such a system that I now turn. The proposed Identity Cards Bill includes provision for maintaining the accuracy of a national identity register and also the provision of information from that register for verification purposes. At this time I see this as a comparatively small intrusion on our privacy, a small price to pay for maintaining our way of life and our freedom. The cost of its implementation, if that implementation is performed correctly, is I believe, entirely justifiable.
	One can scarcely sufficiently emphasise the wide implications of this Bill. I have focused thus far on terrorism and crime, but of course the better control of the hugely complex issues of immigration and asylum is also to be gained. Let us not forget that the European Union is expanding, as is its pool of people who will be legally entitled to free movement within our borders.
	The balance of which I spoke earlier must be set and maintained. The Bill, when enacted, must not be capable of being used to broaden the amount of information recorded as that would be stepping towards a certain nanny state, which would be well beyond the present purpose of the Bill.
	If the Bill, with the appropriate modifications and safeguards, is implemented as intended, it should go some way to making terrorism and crime, as we presently know them, part of our history rather than our destiny. I thank noble Lords for their attention.

The Earl of Northesk: My Lords, I begin by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Ballyedmond, on his informed contribution. I also thank the Minister for the customary grace and eloquence of her introduction. It is therefore with a little regret that I have to say that that is about as far as my generosity is likely to go. As many of your Lordships will be aware, I have deep-seated reservations about the Bill in terms of both principle and practicality.
	Indeed, if pressed, these are matters about which I could speak at tedious length. That said, I shall try to limit my remarks to two or three central themes. Before doing so, I should, for avoidance of doubt, place my aversion towards the Bill in context. I do not in any way underestimate the potential threat from terrorism. Nor do I resile from the Government's—indeed, Parliament's—obligation to protect the nation's security.
	Accordingly, I can accept that the Bill's key objectives are valid. Combating terrorism, cutting crime and reducing fraud and illegal working are legitimate tasks for any responsible government. Moreover, I recognise that most, if not all, of us are accustomed to carrying various forms of identity. To that extent the Government might be tempted to argue that society is fully engaged with an underlying concept of the scheme: the use of a piece of plastic as proof of our identity.
	But, as I shall seek to demonstrate, none of that guarantees that the Bill's provisions are the right way forward. Where to begin? The first essential point to be grasped is that, notwithstanding its short title, this is categorically not a Bill about identity cards. Here we are not helped in that comments from Ministers have been muddled and confused. Indeed, it is almost as though Ministers do not fully understand the character and import of the text of their own Bill.
	With due apology to her, I have to add that the Minister's introduction has, at least in part, added to my sense of opacity, not least because of her exposition of the international dimension of biometric passports and her conflation of the centralised database under the umbrella of the ID cards scheme.
	The following further illustrate the point. At Second Reading in another place the Home Secretary insisted,
	"I must [also] make it clear that we have never proposed and do not propose a scheme under which it would be compulsory to carry a card".—[Official Report, Commons, 20/12/04; col. 1949.]
	And yet, a few minutes later, he commented:
	"The whole point is that, ultimately, the scheme will be effectively compulsory".—[Official Report, Commons, 20/12/04; col.1951.]
	In the same vein, during Committee scrutiny of the Bill in another place, the Minister for Citizenship and Immigration said:
	"Nobody should vote for the ID card scheme unless they understand that it is compulsory... Let us be under no illusion that the Government intend to bring in a compulsory ID scheme; there is no stealth, no dishonesty and no masking of such a proposal".—[Official Report, Commons, Standing Committee B, 20/1/05; col.123.]
	And yet, a few days later, he observed:
	"I said on Second Reading and I have already said in Committee that we do not intend to require anybody to carry a card at all times".
	In summary therefore, the Government's position is that come what may the scheme—registering for and having a card—will be compulsory but carrying one will not. For many the internal logic of this is farcical. The Home Secretary has justified the position by pointing out that,
	"It is the secure record of identity that is important, not the card itself".—[Official Report, Commons, 20/12/04; col. 1954.]
	It may be scant consolation to the Minister, but I do at least understand the point, particularly given the inclusion within the scheme of biometrics. But the inescapable reality is that the Bill is far less about the introduction of identity cards—they are an accidental by-product—than about the establishment of a centralised and over-arching database containing extensive details about every individual in the land.
	Even a cursory glance at the Bill reveals that, out of a total of 45 clauses and two schedules, only five clauses are concerned directly with the cards. The crucial point is that, as identified by the Constitution Committee, it should be called the National Identity Registration and Database Bill. It does not take a genius to work out that this is an entirely different proposition from an ID cards Bill.
	The cosy assumption that the scheme will have widespread public acceptance because of the card culture of the modern age falls by the wayside. Rather, were it more widely known that we are in fact dealing with an extensive—and potentially very intrusive—registration system rooted in IT, public endorsement for the scheme would be likely to be rather more muted than the Government maintain.
	My second point flows naturally from this. As is well known a host of commentators and organisations—Liberty, the Information Commissioner, the Constitution Committee, et al—have made reference to the way in which the Government's proposals will undermine civil liberties. As the Home Affairs Select Committee investigating the draft Bill put it—I choose it out of any number of commentators:
	"An identity card scheme of the sort and on the scale proposed by the Government would undoubtedly represent a significant change in the relationship between the state and the individual in this country".
	The JCHR substantiates this anxiety in its fifth report of the current session, saying that:
	"The provisions of the Bill raise a number of serious questions of human rights compatibility".
	All of this should represent a stark warning. At the very least one could have anticipated that the Government might accept that there are fundamental concerns here that need to be addressed. But in response, the Home Secretary states baldly:
	"In my opinion, it is entirely false to claim that ID cards will erode our civil liberties".—[Official Report, Commons, 20/12/04; col. 1948.]
	adding, in his written response to the JCHR:
	"I do not consider that the principle of a compulsory national registration and identity cards scheme can possibly be in breach of our obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)".
	In turn the Minister for Citizenship and Immigration argues that:
	"The whole debate has been plagued by people making grand assertions about liberty, but then walking away from them and not staying around to justify and explain what they meant".—[Official Report, Commons Standing Committee B, 18/1/05; col.48.]
	I have no difficulty in responding to the Minister's challenge. Taken to its logical conclusion, the scheme represents the establishment of an executive system of control of the citizen, particularly in respect of the proposed audit trail.
	As the Constitution Committee has pointed out, it transfers "ownership" of our identities from our own hands into those of the state. To add insult to injury, some would say, it advances the proposition that we should have to pay for that dubious privilege. With the best will in the world, I cannot conceive how that can be considered as anything other than,
	"a significant change in the relationship between the state and the individual".
	Evidently the Government challenge this proposition. But what matters is that Ministers, in justifying the Bill and the scheme to which it gives the spark of life, are under an obligation to make the case for why they believe this does not offend civil liberties. It is simply not good enough for them, as it were, to stamp their feet and say that they are the fountainhead of all wisdom on the matter and that therefore any critics are inescapably misguided.
	As Liberty has put it,
	"It is a peculiarity of the identity card debate that those who express concerns have been required to justify their opposition rather than requiring the Government to justify their introduction".
	These matters are far too important—arguably they are on a par with the furore we have recently experienced over the Prevention of Terrorism Act—for their substance to be treated dismissively as an aberration emanating from woolly-minded liberals. Indeed, there is a subsidiary point here, admirably highlighted by the JCHR at paragraph 8 of its report. It states that:
	"It must be shown that they"—
	that is to say, the interferences with Article 8 rights—
	"interfere with privacy rights to the minimum degree necessary, and that their aim could not be achieved by less intrusive means".
	I do not want to get bogged down with the efficacy or fitness of the Section 19 declaration made by the Minister, but it seems to me that it remains the case that this absolute requirement has yet to be satisfied.
	This leads to my third point. As I have already said, I have no hesitation in accepting that the underlying objectives of the Bill are legitimate tasks for any responsible government. But a key question remains: to what extent will the scheme usefully address these objectives? And—to borrow the phraseology of the JCHR—to what extent could they,
	"be achieved by less intrusive means"?
	Here too the Government's position is hopelessly muddled and confused. For example, as the Minister for Citizenship and Immigration, put it:
	"Nobody suggests that identity cards are a panacea for or a solution to terrorism. However, they will make a significant contribution".—[Official Report, Commons Standing Committee B, 18/1/05; col. 53.]
	The noble Baroness, Lady Gibson, said something similar in her speech.
	At least it is clear that the Government accept that ID cards are not a silver bullet. But, in reality, the faith and trust of Ministers—or of the Home Office more generally—in the scheme are decidedly lukewarm and insecure. Reports of disagreements in Cabinet over the issue suggest that Government support lacks conviction and is rather less robust than would be appropriate for such a far-reaching measure. This is underscored by a comment from the Identity Cards Programme Team in the Home Office that:
	"The scheme is not being designed to be the primary measure to tackle these problems".
	The fact that the key objectives that the Government trot out with such regularity as the Bill's major justification are not being factored in to the design process is a tacit admission that the contribution that the scheme will make to tackle these problems is, at best, marginal. Moreover it implies that dealing with them could be achieved by other more practical and proportionate means.
	Of course, this woolly approach to the IT architecture of the scheme reflects another flaw within the proposal. As my noble friend Lady Anelay inferred, its putative key objectives are multiple and divergent. They are not necessarily mutually exclusive but, so far as their resolution via IT is concerned, they compete and pull in contrary directions. For example, it is inevitable that the use of an ID card scheme to satisfy the objective of combating terrorism will require distinct IT structures from those required for, say, enhancing public service delivery. In effect, the envisaged purposes of the scheme, because they are disparate, vague and unfocused, anticipate the development of technological solutions that will inevitably end up being equally vague and unfocused. This is a classic scenario—we may already be experiencing something similar with the NHS national plan for IT— where costs are almost bound to explode uncontrollably. Bluntly, the business case for the scheme has yet to be made in any rational or coherent way.
	Against this background, it is wholly unsurprising that no less a personage than the Prime Minister, albeit in another, more oppositional, life, was emboldened to say:
	"Instead of wasting hundreds of millions of pounds on compulsory ID cards . . . let the money provide thousands of extra police officers on the beat in local communities".
	Clearly, he once understood that there might be a more proportionate and cost-effective way of contributing to the identified key objectives. There is some irony in the fact that, presumably because of the heightened security situation as a result of 9/11, he has entirely abandoned that rational and sensible point of view as a means to inform the structure of the Bill.
	I could go on. I have barely scratched the surface of the flaws and infelicities of the Bill. But I leave the last word to the excellent report from the London School of Economics that was presented to your Lordships this morning:
	"There was an overwhelming view expressed by stakeholders involved in this Report that the proposals are too complex, technically unsafe, overly prescriptive and lack a foundation of public trust and confidence".
	I could not agree more. However elegantly the Minister argues her case, and whatever the future of the Bill, the fact remains that, so far as I am concerned, it is irretrievably muddled and confused. Clearly, whether in this Parliament or the next, this House and, indeed, the Government, have a great deal of work to do to make some sort of sense of it, if that is possible.

The Earl of Erroll: My Lords, I compliment the Minister on her patience and courtesy in handling several interruptions in her opening speech by Peers who left the Chamber shortly afterwards. I do not think that is the way to behave.
	I am speaking in this debate because I hope that the Bill will undergo a deep and philosophical rethink before it reappears after any election. I shall split my remarks into four different areas. The first is why we should have ID cars; the second is why we should have a central register and a possible alternative solution to it that might be more acceptable; the third area is problems that might arise about it; and the fourth area is the protection of the individual.
	Why have ID cards? We already have a plethora of ID cards—I am wearing one right now—and they will not go away because they are needed for different purposes. We will keep our parliamentary ID cards, even if new ID cards appear, as they are instantly recognisable to our security staff and a national ID card would not contain all one's permissions and security access.
	Why are the purposes for which individuals and commerce need ID cards? We need to think about that first. The first purpose is as a passport, for border control, and for trying to track a person and find out if he is a criminal or a terrorist and whether he has a record. The second purpose is for financial ID when one does not need to know who a person is. A person can be checked through a credit-checking agency to find out whether he is credit-worthy and whether one would be willing to do business with him. It is not necessary to know where the person lives or whether he has several different IDs. For example, I might want to present myself as the Earl of Erroll for certain purposes, because I think that it could give me an advantage. For other purposes, I may well want to be Mr Erroll because I think I shall get a better bargain. Why should I have to reveal both identities?
	The third reason for ID cards, which is often cited, is for health purposes when one needs to know about someone's allergies or diseases but not necessarily what the person is called. In fact, if a Minister was scraped off the street and it was discovered that he had a particularly nasty notifiable disease, it might be better if his identity was not known. What needs to be known is whether a person is allergic to penicillin.
	The fourth reason is for authorisation, for security access—such as to this building—and to receive benefits. For benefits, a card would probably be issued by the local authority, because it administers those matters. The fifth reason is for electronic ID, to prove, using public key encryption or certificates, who you are over an electronic medium such as the Internet. There is no suggestion that this ID card will do that, although something could be bolted on later. There are other ways of doing that.
	There is one thing that I forgot to say about health, which is that the NHS is about to issue two ID cards. One is the "spine card" which will state whether a person is entitled to NHS medical services. It may or may not be linked to medical records. The other is the E111, which one will use in Europe. So why do we need a national ID card for that?
	My second point is about a central register. It will track a person's interactions with it over his lifetime. In fact, anything that is on an individual's register as a child will probably be rolled forward on the central register when he reaches 16. Central government will have a track of when an individual has had to prove his identity to all sorts of different bodies—some government, some otherwise. I thought that after five years most crimes are expunged from a person's record to give him a fresh start. I am not sure that that will be so in this case.
	A figure of 80 per cent popularity for ID cards is quoted. Someone went out and did a market survey. But that figure depends on the question. If it were, "Would you be happy for a government agency to keep a central register of all inquiries made about your identity throughout your life and of who made them?" the answer might be very different. Most people think that the ID card is nothing to do with a central register. They see it as "flash and go", which I shall speak about in a moment.
	To get round the problem of proving identity, there is no need for a central register. There are two systems: the hierarchical central control ID system, which central government like because they are trying to control the actions of the individual; and what is known as a federated ID system, which has a biometric on a card with your identity, and which can be verified locally. When it is put into a machine, it can communicate with government and civilian databases on whatever it is that you are trying to do, such as proving what money is in your bank for receiving benefit. You have control over your ID in that case. When you take the card away, central government no longer know anything about you, except that benefits or whatever, have been authorised.
	That federated ID leaves control with the individual not the state. It is hugely different and is very much how local authorities are handling ID issues.
	When we consider the Government's reasons for ID cards, they all seem to be very noble aims, such as national security. But it is good intelligence that catches terrorists, not trying to track every person around the place. Most terrorists operate most of the time under perfectly valid IDs. Another reason is the prevention and detection of crime. The problem, as the police have often said, is catching criminals with enough evidence, not finding out who they are once they are caught. Everyone under 16 is excluded, but a huge amount of crime is perpetrated by them, so why are they not being included in identity card schemes?
	Enforcement of immigration controls has been given as a reason for identity cards. They will not be much good as all immigrants get a different card. They get different papers when they come, which will not be instantly recognised by everyone else. How do you know that a card which someone in the first three months, or perhaps longer, is using will not cause problems in the system? People will think that because the immigrant does not have a UK ID card, he is not entitled to be here. He may be perfectly entitled to be here, especially during that initial three months. How will we know about the plethora of cards that will be out there?
	That applies, too, to the enforcements on prohibitions on unauthorised working or employment. The UK card does not tell us that—in fact, it could be misleading. There will be others under work permits using their own perfectly officially recognised ID, which, as the Minister said, they will be keeping. They may also have a work permit entitling them to work here. People may be here on short-term contracts, or for a variety of reasons. Just the fact of a UK ID card may or may not permit them to work. If they are valid for three months, for example, there may be students who are not necessarily entitled to work, except in limited circumstances. I do not know the rules; they would need to be checked. As a small employer, I would have to go through all that stuff to check it out.
	Efficient and effective provision of public services is another reason. Local authorities deliver most of the public services and they are introducing their own management schemes. They do not need a central ID card to do that. If they were able to use the card put out by central government, it would save them huge amounts and would be useful, but they have been told that they are specifically prohibited from riding on the back of the silicon by putting their own applications on it. I do not know why that is. It could be done securely technologically. Benefits fraud tends to be misrepresentation of personal circumstances, not duplicate identity. People will have to produce a national ID card, a benefits card, and so on. They will have purse-loads of cards; there will be no reduction at all.
	There will be problems. First, 13 biometrics will be recorded, comprising 10 fingerprints, two irises and a face, which will not all necessarily check out. In a local bank that has a reader, for example, what will happen if seven of the 13 biometrics match and six do not, or six match and seven do not? What about false positives and false negatives? We need to consider people's credibility and how to handle such situations. Such problems will happen on the front line on the day.
	Certain ethnic and labour groups have certain characteristics. For example, I know that someone who will be speaking later has fingerprints that are difficult to read. Mine probably are as well because I work outside round the farm and the garden from time to time. Certainly the fingerprints of builders and farmers are difficult to read. There are problems reading the fingerprints of Asian community members, which is why China dropped that test. I am told that the dark brown eyes of people of African origin cause difficulties in producing unique scans and photographs. There are therefore challenges as to whether the system will work.
	There will be problems with the technology. To verify locally, you will need to connect to the register and get the information back in time. As most of the transactions will not connect to the register there is a problem of flash and go, as I call it. You flash the card at someone who looks at the face and says, "Great, that's fine". You do not need a central register for that, so it would be possible to forge the card for all those transactions. I need only a blank card with a chip in it. I can forge the rest of the card and it will pass muster. Unless it is inserted into a biometric reading device, there is no way of knowing whether it is mine.
	There are different ID cards for foreign nationals. They will be designated documents but how will we distinguish between them? The Government will not accept liability—it would be a first if they did. Presumably the FSA will not accept the card on its own, as there will be liability issues in certain high-value banking transactions. We shall go through the whole rigmarole.
	The address issue is another problem. The FSA for some strange reason needs to know someone's address to open a bank account, which is why a lot of people do not have bank accounts. The central register will also want an address. If it requires the same level of proof as the FSA, not many ID cards will be issued to people who do not pay utility bills because someone else in the household does; people who do not claim benefits who have no transactions with government departments; and those who do not drive. They cannot prove where they live, so they will not get ID cards. What can be done about that?
	What about changes of address? There will be £1,000 fine for not registering a change of address. I believe that special arrangements will be made for students, but what if someone has no fixed abode? It makes nonsense of the whole system. Criminals will just disappear. If they happen to be found, they will pay the fine. They can afford to as I expect that their proceeds of crime will be a lot more than £1,000.
	We will be vulnerable to over-zealous enforcement authorities. We hear a lot from Amnesty about the problems in France and other places. If we look back at what happened in the late 1850s to the end of the century when the British were allowed to move freely throughout Europe, and the continentals were not, there was always trouble. The continentals were desperate to get rid of their ID cards and did so, following the British model. Therefore, why on earth are we throwing that away?
	What about leaks of information? Anyone believing that everything is safe nowadays and will not be leaked must be joking.
	Finally, the register will become a prime terrorist target. Can you imagine the value of infiltrating someone on to it? There have to be mechanisms to switch ID. There are witness protection programmes, transgender reassignment, and agents in the field whose true identity must be concealed. Terrorists could have perfect access to the register.
	I have talked for too long, but I should say on the issue of protection that we should not assume that J Edgar Hoover's reincarnation cannot come here. The report of the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution, HL paper 82 is brief, to the point and excellent. The Minister in another place made some robust statements about Parliament keeping a firm grip on our freedoms, but we cannot embed protections in perpetuity. We have no constitutional Supreme Court to overturn legislation unfortunately, despite the latest moves of the Government.
	People say, "I've got nothing to hide", but have they never done anything that could be used against them once they into public office? The register will track you through your life, from the new register of all schoolchildren through to your grave. My Jewish friends are very concerned because it could be linked through the address to the census, which carries ethnic and religious details. Remember what happened in Holland.
	In conclusion, an ID card is basically an internal passport. It gives the authorities huge power to control our future movements and other things. It will irretrievably alter the balance between the citizen and the state. Millions have died defending our freedoms. Just because we are frightened of some terrorist attacks, we should not throw away those freedoms lightly.

The Countess of Mar: My Lords, the Minister began by saying that our identities are precious and need to be protected. I would happily carry an identity card if I knew that I had ownership of it and of the data in the register to which the card relates.
	I will say from the beginning that I feel deep unease about the Identity Cards Bill. I am relieved to know that I am not alone. When the topic is discussed with acquaintances, the initial reaction is that ID cards must be a good thing. As the Minister and other speakers have said, we all carry evidence of our identity with us at some time or another; for example, passport, driving licence, bank cards and business identity cards. It would simplify matters greatly if just one card would serve all those different purposes, would it not? However, when it comes to the proposals in the Bill, it is a completely different matter. Like my noble friend Lord Errol, I wonder how many of the 80 per cent who agree with ID cards know the detail of the Bill.
	The carrying of identity cards was compulsory in the UK between 1939 and 1952. Originally, those cards served three purposes. They were for conscription, rationing and national service. As the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, reminded us, when a parliamentary committee looked at their use in 1950, it discovered that those three functions had become 39. In February 1952, the National Registration Act was repealed as one of the first acts of the Churchill government to "free the people". In the judgment that led to the repeal, Willcock v Muckle, on 26 June 1951, Lord Goddard said:
	"To use Acts of Parliament passed for particular purposes during war, in times when the war is past, except that technically a state of war exists tends to turn law-abiding subjects into lawbreakers, which is a most undesirable state of affairs".
	The learned Lord was talking about what is becoming known as "function creep". We are already seeing that phenomenon introduced in this Bill. One of the arguments frequently deployed by the Government to justify the ID card scheme is that the UK is required to establish biometric travel documents in any event because of international agreements.
	As the noble Baroness has explained, the US Government required all visa-waiver program countries to implement, by October 2004, biometric passport programmes that satisfy International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) standards. The requirement for all EU citizens to be fingerprinted is not as a result of US requirements; it is EU policy and the UK is not bound by the EU specification.
	The ICAO's web page says:
	"ICAO's mandate to develop MRTDs [machine readable travel documents] is provided by Articles 22, 23 and 37 of the Chicago Convention which oblige Contracting States to develop and adopt international standards for customs, immigration and other procedures to facilitate the border-crossing processes involved in international air transport."
	There are a lot of acronyms. It goes on to say:
	"MRTDs are developed by ICAO's Technical Advisory Group on Machine Readable Travel Documents (TAG/MRTD). The TAG drafts and adopts "specifications" (i.e. detailed technical requirements) for the design of these travel documents. These specifications are published in ICAO Doc 9303."
	The New Orleans Resolution of 21 March 2003 states:
	"ICAO-MRTD/NTWG recognizes that Member States currently and will continue to utilize the facial image as the primary identifier for MRTDs and as such endorses the use of standardized digitally-stored facial images"—
	this language is awful—
	"as the globally interoperable biometric to support facial recognition technologies for machine assisted identity verification with machine-readable travel documents. ICAO TAG-MRTD/NTWG further recognizes that in addition to the use of a digitally stored facial image, Member States can use standardized digitally-stored fingerprint and/or iris images as additional globally interoperable biometrics in support of machine assisted verification and/or identification".
	I draw noble Lords' attention to the words "can use". We have long debates in this House over the words "can" and "must". This document, which I assume is the one on which the Government are relying for support, says "can", not "must". The Government have therefore gold-plated the base requirement of the ICAO by adding biometric identifiers to the list of identifying information in the Bill. Certainly there is no obligation on the UK to use fingerprint or iris biometrics. This is a form of function creep.
	The Bill leaves wide open the opportunity for further function creep. There are far too many clauses—I think the noble Baroness said that there were 60—and subsections which permit the Secretary of State to
	"by order modify";
	"make an order adding or containing",
	or,
	"by order designate".
	I have no doubt that, should the Bill go to Committee, these clauses will be thoroughly discussed. We cannot give arbitrary powers to the Home Secretary so freely. I have no doubt that the Minister will give the Government's usual response in these circumstances: "Of course the Government have no intention of abusing the power, and in any case it is open to either House to block the orders". These assurances are not enough, for reasons that we all know only too well.
	I make no apology for labouring the points about function creep. I have been talking only about passports. We are told that it is proposed that this "voluntary" ID card will be compulsory when a UK citizen applies for a passport. Already we see that this voluntary scheme will be eroded by the words in Clause 6. The Secretary of State can decide who must register and when. There is no indication of the Government's thinking on this matter in the Bill. The penalties for contravening an obligation to register are not, by any means, light.
	As other noble Lords have said, the London School of Economics has today published The Identity Project interim report. Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, I have not yet had time to read the full text, but I am impressed by the rigour of the research, which has been overseen by no fewer than 14 professors from very different fields. While the authors agree that,
	"the establishment of a secure national identity system has the potential to create significant, though limited, benefits for society",
	they go on to state:
	"However, the proposals currently being considered in Parliament are neither safe nor appropriate".
	As other noble Lords have done, I recommend that the Minister reads the report.
	The House will know that I have been concerned for a long time about the quality of the data held by social services departments on their mysterious Samson database. I am appalled that the merest suspicion about a mother exhibiting the signs of the—now discredited—Munchausen's syndrome by proxy, can be entered into the records maintained for a child who is deemed to be "at risk" under the Children Act 1989. It is apparent that the person making the accusation—and I say "accusation", not "diagnosis"—need not be qualified to make it, as in none of the many cases of which I have been made aware, not one single mother—it is usually the mother—has undergone a proper psychiatric examination.
	The effect of that is to bar accused mothers from ever working with children—even from helping in a Sunday school. Even if social workers agree that the accusation is a false one, I am told by Ministers that the entry can never be expunged from the record, as it is an opinion that pertained at a particular time and is, therefore, a record of the family's history. Perhaps the Minister can tell me whether a facility for the passage of information contained in the register will be set up for children between their birth and the age of 18, as required by the Children Act 2004 and the register in the Bill.
	The reason I have raised this issue at this particular time is that I note that Clause 2(5)(b) relieves the Secretary of State of the duty to correct information held on the register,
	"unless . . . he considers that it is appropriate to do so".
	That makes me deeply unhappy. Surely, natural justice should demand that if a recorded fact is inaccurate an absolute duty to correct it should be placed upon the Secretary of State. Otherwise, particularly in relation to matters concerning employment or health, an individual's life may be permanently blighted, as have been the lives of the mothers I have described.
	There is a great deal more that disturbs me. The need for a national identity register in the form prescribed by the Bill cannot be justified. I have heard the words of the Minister, but do Her Majesty's Government really believe that the national interest purposes listed in Clause 1(4) will be best served in this way? Will any more crime, immigration or employment infringements or benefit fraud be prevented because the perpetrators are registered and have ID cards? I believe not. We have banned small arms and have seen an increase in crime involving these weapons. Will the possession of an ID card prevent a determined criminal committing a crime? Such is the sophistication of computer hackers and forgers that they will always be, as they are now, one step ahead of us.
	I am told that the Information Commissioner has warned that we are sleepwalking into a surveillance state. As a farmer, I am aware of the various means of providing traceability for livestock. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, left out Defra. It knows all about tracing people. Why do we not have Defra draft the Bill? It also knows about farmers who get around registering their animals. One means of tracing animals is by computer readable microchips. I wonder whether noble Lords are aware that nightclubs in Spain, Holland, and now, I believe, Glasgow are offering to microchip their clients so that their bar bills can be paid directly from their bank accounts without the need for cash or credit cards. Perhaps, in the future, we will all be "chipped" at birth.
	I exhort the Minister to heed the words of the late Lord Goddard and the example of Winston Churchill who "freed the people".